Bearing One Another’s Burdens: A Latter-day Saint Hermeneutic of Organizational Ethics in Medicine

Abstract

This essay argues that a Latter-day Saint hermeneutic can deepen contemporary debates about organizational ethics in medicine. Drawing on Mosiah 18, Doctrine and Covenants 121, and Doctrine and Covenants 104, it reads scripture for insight into burden-bearing, stewardship, accountability, and the moral uses of institutional power. In conversation with Mary V. Rorty, Patricia Werhane, and Ann Mills’s work on organization ethics, the essay contends that ethical failures in health care often arise from structural pressures rather than isolated bedside choices. An LDS perspective helps explain why hospitals need shared ethical processes, accountable authority, and institutional practices that protect the vulnerable and distribute responsibility justly.